Closer to Home
December 09, 2014 / Persistence
Thanksgiving week we went to New York City and from there to New Jersey to spend the holiday with our older daughter and her family. In The City (I suppose there is another city, but), I introduced my husband to the pleasures of walking The High Line, the elevated linear park reclaimed from an… Read More
December 08, 2014 / Not For Children
A mother to her young child, as we started down the ramp to Ground Zero, impatience and anxiety in her voice, “It’s a different kind of museum.” Indeed. The worst was the object labeled “Composite”. It had its own separate place, somewhat apart from the other… Read More
November 18, 2014 / Cheer at the Dog Park
Often I walk down the street to the park near our house (http://hilarysplaces.com/blog/entry/what-can-you-do-with-a-dump). Not only is it a lovely place, with fine vistas, playing fields, a track where sometimes I walk a speedy mile, a playground, and lots of young trees, and a wetland, but it… Read More
October 30, 2014 / At The Circus
Every year my younger daughter and I go to The Circus. The big one, I mean, the one of my childhood and hers and her sister’s, Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey. I’ve gone to other circuses, and they are fun or intriguing, but this, as far as I am concerned, is The Circus. Now… Read More
September 25, 2014 / All Change
So, about twenty thousand years ago, Cape Cod, where I am sitting in Cottage #5 right now, was covered by ice. A mile or so thick, it flowed and ground along imperceptibly, grabbing anything at all loose and hauling it at least for short distances. Anything that had been growing and living in its… Read More
September 09, 2014 / The World As Flea Market
When down here on Cape Cod for our September vacation, we usually go to the local flea market. When I was a kid my parents always visited whatever the local junk store was, wherever we were on our driving trips. That’s what they called them, junk stores. They would wander around looking and… Read More
August 21, 2014 / Solace on the Trail
Some months ago the family decided to spend a couple of days all together at a hundred-year old family resort upcountry in New Hampshire—my husband and I, our daughter Alyson, and Alyson’s sister Susannah and her husband and three boys. After our Alyson died, the rest of us felt we… Read More
August 12, 2014 / I Saw My Mother
I saw my Mother. I was waiting in a line, an interminable line, to board the plane from Amsterdam to Boston, and I saw my Mother. She was sitting at a table in a small café near the line, and she was eating something, I think. Tears came to me and rolled down my cheeks. “Mother.… Read More
July 31, 2014 / Alyson Marie Hopkins, beyond fear and pain
Alyson Marie Hopkins July 9, 1965 - July 28, 2014 It is with the greatest sadness I tell you that Hilary & John's precious and loving daughter, Alyson Marie Hopkins, passed away Monday, July 28th at the age of 49. She had a radiant soul, always cheerful, in spite of her many challenges.… Read More
July 09, 2014 / July 4: Old Ironsides Turns Around
In 1830, the poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, distressed by plans to scrap the noble warship U. S. S. Constitution, wrote the following poem of outcry. Published immediately in a Boston newspaper, then in papers in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, his angry words stirred the public to outrage,… Read More